Sydney Susan

Niki, kidney failure can be part of Addison's Disease, so hopefully it will turn around quickly with the treatment you are starting on.

This is fantastic news Niki - both v treatable. You feel like a new woman v soon. But you need to give at least one of your doctors a big kick up the behind for not testing you sooner - thyroid conditions are v common and low blood pressure should have triggered an Addisons test. Both of these are probably autoimmune conditions, so it would be wise to read about these disorders generally... You can't always rely on GP's to put the pieces of the puzzle together, unfortunately. I have several autoimmune conditions, and they are known for that - if you've got one you are more likely to have others.

Depending on how severe your sleep apnoea is, a splint may meet your needs far better than a CPAP machine used only 4 hours a night. Non-compliance (little, inconsistent or no use of CPAP) is a huge problem in treating sleep apnoea, and (i believe) far better with a properly fitted splint. You should be able to find an article on this and share it with your doctor - perhaps that will convince him?? I've added one below. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23413266/ And note this was comparing a splint with significantly more hours of CPAP use than you are doing.

Perhaps a sleep technician could help you work out why you are finding the CPAP so hard to adjust to. It has to be set to the right pressures, to ramp up to pressure over time (ideally you will be asleep before it is up to full pressure), and your mask must have no leaks yet allow exhaled co2 to escape, and you must sleep with your mouth closed or use a chin strap to keep it closed. It can be quite a challenge working all that put by yourself. I have a nasal mask and find that quite comfortable except on hot or humid nights. Because it only covers my nose I don't find it at all claustrophobic. My dr insisted I take my machine to hospital and use it, which is no chore for me as I find it quite reassuring and restful. My father died young-ish and he had untreated sleep apnoea which was probably a contributing factor. I want to die really really old, and yet leave a great looking corpse.

Do you mean declined by insurance or declined to use a CPAP yourself? Sorry if that sounds thick, but we don't have (in Australia) the concept of your insurance company declining you care recommended by your dr - although we also don't get much of a rebate for CPAP machines on insurance ; ( - I got about $600 on my insurance, which is considered a good policy. New, good spec machines cost around $2k (with mask). I chose to get an APAP which is more flexible, and this cost me $2600 (including mask and follow ups indefinately). If you've been diagnosed with sleep apnoea I'd strongly recommend a (properly fitted) CPAP or APAP machine and use it consistently. It makes a huge difference to how I feel, is said to help with weight loss and untreated sleep apnoea is a serious risk to your health. If your sleep apnoea is mild, a "splint" may help, be cheaper and easier to use. I consider the $2k I'm out of pocket some of the best money I've ever spent on myself.

Sorry Alex, should have said... Was posting via my iPad but not using the app - direct to the website.

I just created a post but when I did so couldn't see the text I was typing, though it posted ok. I tried it edit but again couldn't see the text so couldn't.

Interesting article in my local paper today DECEMBER 03, 2013 - Sydney Morning Herald Are slim people happier? Dr George Blair-West. Slim people are happier people. Moreover, their happiness is more profound. Despite the eternal stereotypes of the ever-smiling, rotund, fairy godmother, and the paunchy, ho-hoing Santa Claus, the research supports a rather different reality. This, however, is not a story of causality. This is a story of association. Losing weight will not make you happy, but happy people are generally slimmer. So, what is the relationship between happiness and weight loss? The link is the elusive word ‘meaning’. As a doctor and psychiatrist, I subspecialise in only three areas of psychiatry: the psychotherapy of weight loss, trauma therapy and relationship therapy. The most difficult of these three areas, not by a little way, but by a very long way, is obesity. If only losing weight was a simple as ‘just eating less and exercising more.’ Of course, if it was, we would not have the obesity plague that we’re faced with currently. The truth is that most people know precisely what healthy eating looks like. Moreover, they want to lose weight, but something sabotages the process. While we continue to think of obesity as a condition in its own right, rather than as a symptom of an underlying problem, our abject failure in treating it will continue to haunt those of us in the medical and related health professions. You do not need to be Freud to know that a significant amount of overeating is self-medicating unhappiness in all its forms – stress, anxiety, depression. (‘Comfort Eating’ should go down in history as one of the greatest over-simplifications of all time.) chocolate (the other major food group) is the most widely used antidepressant on the planet. The first step in therapy then, is helping people to develop alternative and more effective ways of managing these emotions – this is ‘Treating Obesity Psych 101’ – it is also just the tip of an iceberg of considerable complexity. Over more than a decade, as I have drilled deeper into the minds of my obese patients, another issue emerged. For many people food and eating was the most meaningful part of their day-to-day life. If you are going to put somebody, for whom food is the high point of their day, on a diet, please do not be surprised by the inevitable failure that follows. (Mind you, this does not stop health professionals from making this mistake over and over again. The unfortunate cost is the creation of confusion and a failure mindset in our hard done by patients.) My intrigue with what I was seeing clinically took me to the profound research, spanning the last 20 years, of Professor Carol Ryff at the University of Wisconsin, USA. In one particular, well-designed study she looked closely at two groups of women. With 135 in total, members of both groups rated themselves as ‘happy’. This was no airy-fairy investigation of warm fuzzy feelings. Ryff was interested in the correlation between hard biological markers like cortisol (an immune system marker), HDL cholesterol and body weight, with two different forms of happiness. One group were defined by being satisfied with their life, enjoying its pleasures and generally having a subjective sense of well-being. The other group had a deeper sense of well-being built around the desire for personal growth, meaningful experiences and relationships, along with a sense of purpose in their life. Ryff found statistically significant differences when she looked at those who lived with meaning and purpose in their life. Not only did they have lower weight, but their good cholesterol levels were higher and their cortisol levels were better. In short, happiness built around meaning and purpose is not a luxury in life – your weight and your health depend on it. I was surprised to find that, much more than most challenges in therapy, my patients really struggled with trying to find what was meaningful in their life – let alone the purpose this would guide them to. Too often they would make the challenge more problematic by adding the ‘ion’ to what is fundamentally a ‘quest’ - making it a ‘question’ – a question they could not answer. At school, a question without an answer equalled ‘idiot’. Like most of us, when faced with a question we do not know the answer to, my patients pushed it away. Once they understood it was a journey, a Quest, they needed to pursue over time, they settled into the process. Slowly but surely as my patients found more meaningful pursuits in their life than eating, they began losing weight. More importantly they lost the weight and kept it off, while at the same time saying to me, ‘This is strange, because I don’t feel like I’m on a diet at all.’ Finding meaning is not about quitting your day job and going in search of your soul in a third world country. This journey begins at home. It begins with a detailed examination of what you found meaningful in your past and which aspects of your life and work now are meaningful. I also get my patients to look at their dreams for the future, some of which they have held since they were children. Once we have found what is meaningful we look at what purpose this guides us to. This all takes time, self-exploration and regular reflection. Managing the powerful physiological and psychological forces that drive overeating, requires us to bring out the big guns. There are no bigger guns than meaning and purpose. Dr George Blair-West is the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning The Way of The Quest that explains the ‘how to’ of finding meaning and purpose. His first book, the best selling Weight Loss for Food Lovers: Understanding our minds and why we sabotage our weight loss has been translated into Dutch and Chinese. For more information about his latest work into the motivation and mindset of weight loss visit www.weightlossforfoodlovers.com

Thank you. That does help - I imagined myself in a terrible state due to nausea and vomiting. I know nutritional issues can be dealt with with pic lines etc, but feared how my "new" (7months old) small tum would cope with violent vomiting.

Hi Mindijean and others. I knw from other posts that you've just had your sleeve op, and hope all is ok I had a somewhat advanced cervical cancer (of a kind not detected by Pap smears) that was treated with major surgery 7years ago. I've been we'll since though growing fatigue in the past few years, resulting in a leukaemia diagnosis yesterday (on my birthday too!). I'm in a "watch and wait" phase at present and hoping it stays that way for a long time, but I expect to need chemo (and all the lovely nausea and vomiting that goes with it) in the future. I guess this means my weight loss is assured (????) but I'm nervous about how - as a sleever - I'll cope with treatment and its side effects. I too would like to hear from others who've been down this very scarey road. I could really do with some good news right now, to be honest.

Thinking of you Niki, and hoping that answers are coming to the fore.

That is fantastic. You look great!

I think you'd have to lose a limb to get another 30lbs off that frame. You look great!

I'd heard about treatment for cancer being more difficult post-sleeve, because there is not enough stomach to cut out a portion and still leave a useful amount behind. I hadn't heard that having had gastrectomy was a risk factor for stomach cancer, though I'm not doubting that statement. Obesity itself is a risk factor for most cancers, so in the absence of a family history or prior cancer, losing weight may just cancel out an increased risk from having the surgery itself... I don't know that, I'm just surmising. Some of us have ongoing issues with reflux, and mine is certainly 'patchy' (good some days, awful others), and statistically speaking I think that is far more likely to give me trouble down the track than stomach cancer. Gastrectomies (not all 'sleeves', all shapes and sizes) have been performed for stomach cancer, ulcers, lapband erosions and all sorts of things for many many years... they are only new as a bariatric procedure, not a new procedure per se. There must be some long term follow up information - although the outcomes may be clouded by the health issues those patients had.

I'm 53 tomorrow and I love skinny jeans!

Gamergirl, are you sure you don't have Hashimoto's? It just means autoimmune disease of the thyroid, rather than some other cause of thyroid failure. As you are diagnosed with one AI condition (RA), it's highly likely you'd have more, and Hashimoto's is the most common one. I believe Hashimoto's, Coeliac disease, Diabetes and RA share a genetic profile... Involve the same gene/s. You need to have a biopsy of the thyroid to confirm there are auto antibodies in the thyroid tissue. I don't think it makes a jot of difference to the way your thyroid function is treated, but can be useful for doctors to know if you have a single AI condition or a "systemic" one.

I also agree with the "carb sensitive" statements. I used to think it was bunkham, but avoiding all grains and cereals has a massive effect on reducing my hunger and increasing my weight loss. I have some other big health issues going on, but all things considered I'm feeling really well.

I have had Hashimoto's for 30 plus years, am post menopausal, female, have a child, had about 80lbs to lose. I've had good success but my thyroid did go "off" after 2 months, stopping weight loss for another 2 months until I got a new thyroxine dosage sorted out. I'm losing again now but not super fast, but frankly I could eat less and exercise more. I lost 22kg in 2 months, nothing for more than 2 months and 5kg in the last 2 months. I'm only 5kg from my goal (BMI of 24) so expect my loss to be slow at this stage. As others have said, I was not a junk food eater though my portion sizes were too large. I've now found that eating more than 1000 cal a day causes me to gain weight... So I either need to exercise a lot more or eat about half a normal / average adult intake. I originally assumed I was just in a stall and took ages to get around to having my thyroid function tested - only did it when my concentration went really wacky. I usually have dry skin and hair anyway (since menopause), so those signs are not so reliable for me. I strongly recommend getting your thyroid function checked after a couple of months, as the stress of surgery may have triggered my thyroid to slow further... Don't really know, but wish I'd been more prudent. The first 6 months of being sleeved is apparently the most valuable for weight loss, and I'm annoyed with myself for wasting half that time. Good luck with your sleeve journey.

I agree with Turnthepage. You will have read on loads of threads of people feeling overwhelmed in the weeks or months after surgery. And even more say that they either wished they had or are glad they did work on their "heads" as well as their stomachs. The sleeve isn't a magic thing that solves all, there's work to be done to lose weight and keep it off and challenges along the way. It's not right for everyone and for most of us there's a right and a wrong time to do it. It takes as much courage to honestly say "I'm not ready just yet" as "I can do this". At 18 you have time - make the most of it. That's using all your advantages, not failing.

There is a great thread you should read - its called "lapband vs sleeve vs bypass surgery", started by Hayleylamas. I don't know to link to it but I just found it again using the search function. There's heaps of relevant stuff there (and some quite irreverent but highly entertaining stuff too) and it's recent. Good luck.

Oh dear, I was trying to make you laugh, not tremble with fear! If you really are that worried, why not put off the op for a while? It will be there when you are ready for it. I gather you are a lot younger than me, so you have time on your side. Good luck.

One day at a time... and post op, every day is a little bit better than the one before, then all of a sudden it feels "normal". I'm in my 50s and sailed through my op and recovery - not as easily as the poster immediately before me, but still very good. Of course my recovery doesn't tell you what your recovery will be like... no one can tell you that, not even your doctor. But the odds are definately with you... more so if you have health issues that weight loss will help to resolve. When you get those "crazy" ideas zipping around in your head (and we all get them from time to time), remember that over 90% of people die in their pyjamas... yet not one govt in the world has ever declared pj's a health hazard. Spooky, eh? No, of course not... but the silliest ideas can become "truth" in the wrong hands.

Fantastic photo Misty. Congrats.

Great pic! I'm old (53 in 4 days!) but my boobs went first... I'm channelling teenage "a handful will have to do" all over again. Dead jealous of your curves!

Addisons symptoms - <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/addisons-disease/DS00361/DSECTION=symptoms'>http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/addisons-disease/DS00361/DSECTION=symptoms</a> Living with Addisons- http://www.addisons.org.uk/info/manual/adshgguidelines.pdf On first page it says words to the effect of "once treated people with Addisons live pretty much the way they did before the disorder".